Food

I saw a quote somewhere once that said something about being fit is 20% working out and 80% what you eat. I agree with that idea because when I was a member of a Crossfit gym I witnessed people who came and worked hard every day for years, but still looked the same as they did when they first started. This is all due to diet. I’m not talking about those unhealthy fad diets, but your daily diet or what I will call it from here on out: your eating plan. What do you eat every day?

I’ve followed many different programs in my life when it comes to eating plans from vegetarian to Paleo to eating clean to following a created plan from a book. The one thing I’ve discovered is the same in all these plans is don’t eat junk food and eat lots of fruits and vegetables. The same is true for the Beachbody eating plans.

The other thing that is the same is that you need to plan ahead in order to be successful. First, get that junk food out of your house! If you don’t buy you can’t eat it! I used to buy Oreos for a treat for my kids because I dislike Oreos and knew I wouldn’t be tempted to eat them. Another critical component of the plan is to have a plan: what are you going to eat for each meal each day of the upcoming week. I tend to eat the same thing every day for a week when it comes to lunches and snacks and have variety in my breakfasts and dinners.

If you are just trying to be healthier, cutting out junk and limiting sugar should be enough, but if you are trying to lose weight then you need to consider portion sizes and cutting out calories. I’ve spent many years of my life diligently counting calories, sometimes even breaking down each food item into calories by carbs, fats, and proteins. Beachbody makes portion control super easy. Those little, plastic, color-coded containers (see photo above) take away all the time consuming math. You still have to do a little bit of math in the beginning to figure out your calorie range and how many of each container you are eating each day, but that is nothing compared to what I used to do.

With all that said, the hardest part of eating healthy is you have to cook. Junk and processed foods are easy to grab and eat, but healthy food that is good for you takes prep and cooking. I wish I had a personal chef, that would make eating right super easy, but like most people I don’t. So it has to become a priority. We won’t be perfect at it all the time, but it needs to be a constant effort to stay on track.